High Levels Of Exercise Linked To 9-Year Biological Age Advantage

Trending News: What Will Take Nine Years Off Your Age? Exercise, Science Says

Long Story Short

High levels of exercise have been linked to a nine-year biological ageing advantage.

Long Story

The fight against aging has been exploring new frontiers recently. Researchers at the Salk Institute in California last year reversed the aging in mice, artificial organs are becoming more complex and capable and in March Australian researchers discovered a natural compound that can help repair DNA damaged by aging. But what if you could knock almost a decade off your age by simply working out?

That’s the discovery of a new study from Brigham Young University recently published in Preventative Medicine: that high levels of physical activity equate to a nine-year ageing advantage… at the cellular level, at least.

“Just because you’re 40, doesn’t mean you’re 40 years old biologically,” said the study’s author, Larry Tucker, in a news release. Tucker is an exercise science professor at BYU. “We all know people that seem younger than their actual age. The more physically active we are, the less biological ageing takes place in our bodies.”

Tucker’s study found that it was all about the telomeres — those caps at the end of each strand of DNA that protect our chromosomes, playing a critical part in the ageing process (basically, the older we get, the shorter our telomeres). People with consistently high levels of physical activity were shown to have significantly longer telomeres than those who either led sedentary lifestyles or were moderately active.

So what is highly active? It’s pretty high. For men, it’s 40 minutes of jogging, five days a week; women, 30 minutes.

The study involved analyzing the data from 5823 adults who participated in the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The index included data for 62 activities participants might have engaged in over a 30-day window, allowing Tucker to calculate levels of physical activity. He found that the shortest telomeres came from sedentary people — 140 base pairs of DNA less at the end of their telomeres than the highly active individuals. Surprisingly, the moderately active participants were closer in telomere length to sedentary people than they were highly active people.

“If you want to see a real difference in slowing your biological aging, it appears that a little exercise won’t cut it,” Tucker continued in the news release. “You have to work out regularly at high levels.”

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Is it just cardio exercise that have this effect on aging. or will a session with weights produce the same results?

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